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I also liked this: A vast majority of aid — 94 percent — is noncash. Donor resistance is one reason for this; it is not easy to persuade American oligarchs, Br
by einars 10y ago
I also liked this:
A vast majority of aid — 94 percent — is noncash. Donor resistance is one reason for this; it is not easy to persuade American oligarchs, British inheritors and Japanese industrialists to fork over their money to the extremely poor to use as they see fit. “There’s the usual worries about welfare dependency, the whole ‘Give a man a fish’ thing,” said Amanda Glassman, a public health and development expert at the Center for Global Development. “It’s so powerful. It’s really a basic psychological feature of the landscape. You’ll start drinking. You’ll start lying around at home because you’re getting paid.”
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If cash transfers flourished, “the whole aid industry would have to fire itself.”
- M_Grey 10y agoKey words to remember there... "Aid industry".
- Eridrus 10y agoI'm not against cash transfers, but I feel like they can't solve everything, having a bit more money won't necessarily cause hospitals or schools to appear, so I think that some non-cash support will continue to be necessary to provide expertise that they couldn't obtain on the free market.
- jhlgkhkhil 10y agoIf direct cash transfers work the economy of the recipient country will grow. They can then afford to build their own schools and hospitals - and employ teachers and doctors to work in them.
- greyman 10y agoIf honest and moral people will rise to the leadership positions - which is not what always happens.
- thehardsphere 10y agoPart of the arrogance of the current providers of non-cash support is their foreign, detached judgement that hospitals or schools are the best ways to help people. As if we can just transport shiny buildings to the third world and magically solve all the problems there because those buildings work great in the first world.